Last-ditch attempt to save Soviet Union remembered 20 years on

Tanks near the White House in Moscow on August 19, 1991 (RIA Novosti / Fedoseev) / RIA Novosti

On August 19th twenty years ago Muscovites heard tanks rolling past their windows as a state of emergency was imposed by a group of hard-line Communist officials in a bid to seize power and stop the reforms that broke up of the Soviet Union.

­While the dramatic events unfolded in the capital, most of the population was being kept in the dark.

People turning on their TV sets in Moscow on the morning of 19th August 1991 were greeted by a broadcast of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Why? Because out on the streets, a real-life drama was taking place. Confusion and panic reigned, even among the tank crews themselves.

“We were ordered to march toward Moscow. I thought I'd figure it out when I get there, as we weren't given any information as to what was happening,” remembers tank commander Sergey Yevdokimov.

The president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, had been shut in his Foros holiday home in the Crimea.

A “State Committee on the State of Emergency” declared itself in charge.

It was made up of high-ranking Communist Party officials, including the head of the KGB, the defense minister, and Gorbachev’s vice-president.

They were terrified that Gorbachev’s democratic reforms and the “Union Treaty”, due to be signed on 20th August, would draw so much power away from the center to the Soviet Republics that it would destroy the Soviet Union.

Coup participant Vasily Starodubtsev insists, “It was an act of treason on the part of Gorbachev and Yeltsin and their circle, outright treason. They were going to ruin our country.”

In a press conference later that day, they said that Gorbachev was ill, and that they would take over in his absence. But their performance was not convincing.

On 19th August, Vice-President Gennady Yanaev and the other members of the Emergency Committee sat in the building that now houses the offices of news organizations, including RT. As Yanaev delivered his statement, the assembled journalists noticed that his hands were shaking. Then, one 24 -year-old journalist blew his official words right out of the water: “Tell me, do you realize that you have conducted a coup d’etat?”